PAWHUSKA, Okla.  Drummond Ranches are an
institution in the Osage, and Fred A. Drummond is
considered by family members to be the patriarch of that
institution.

Making a go of it in the cattle business can be a
tough venture, but everything the Drummond family has
accumulated and accomplished has been done with cattle.

"My dad was a wonderful rancher, probably one of
the best I ever knew. I learned the ranching and cattle
business from him," Drummond says.

"The most important lesson I learned from him,
though, was that my word was my bond. That was the number
one thing I never forgot."

That lesson and one about taking care of your banker
are two that Fred A. has passed on to his two sons and
two grandsons who now basically run the Drummond
enterprise.

The Drummond family originated in Scotland. Frederick
Drummond, Fred As grandfather, along with one of
his brothers, came to the land of opportunity in the late
1800s at the tender age of 18. Two other Drummond sons
migrated from their homeland to South Africa.

Frederick came to the U.S. to make his fortune in the
cattle business, or so he hoped. He first tried Texas,
but luck wasnt in his favor. Drummond was working
his way back east, but only got as far as St. Louis when
he ran into an Indian trader. The trader offered him a
chance to trade with him in the Osage. Drummond had no
idea where the Osage even was, but being 18 and broke, he
figured why not. Thats how the Drummond family name
took root in Osage County.

In 1869 the Osage Indians purchased part of what was
then known as the Cherokee strip, now Osage County, for
75 cents an acre from the Cherokee tribe. The Osage
Indians, its said, bought the land from the
Cherokees because it was too rough for the white
mans plow and there was good hunting and fishing in
the area.

The Osage tribe was originally located mostly in
Northeastern Kansas, Northwestern Missouri and
Southwestern Nebraska. The Osage chiefs were the first
Indian chiefs that Lewis and Clark took back to meet the
"Great White Father" in Washington D.C.

The Osage purchase totaled a million and a half acres,
and it was divided among 2229 tribe members. Frederick
Drummond, Fred As cousin, has an old plat book,
dated 1909, which shows how the land was divided
originally. When the young Drummond arrived with his
trader partner in the late 1800s, he was one of the first
white men to settle in the Osage.

Others followed.

J. Paul Gettys first oil well was in Osage
County, and Phillips Petroleum brought in the first
million-barrel fields there. The Osage tribe has always
owned all the mineral rights in the county, which at one
time made them the wealthiest people per capita in the
world.

Fred Alexander Drummond was born in 1914 and reared at
Hominy, just south of Pawhuska. He grew up in the cattle
business, just as his father R.C. had. Most of the
Drummonds in Osage County who are in the cattle business
today are the R.C. Drummond children, grandchildren and
great grandchildren.

As with his father and the generation before, ranching
was all Fred A. ever wanted to do. By the time he was 12,
he had taken out his first note at the bank, and he was
trading with the ranch hands long before that. His father
co-signed that first note for $3000 so the youngster
could buy his first 100 heifers.

When he was 18, Drummond bought his first ranch from
his father for $10 an acre.

"It was worth a little more than that,"
Drummond admits. "Dad never gave me an acre of
grass. I always bought everything, but he always sold it
to me half price. Thats the way I got my
start."

He started college at Oklahoma A&M in 1932. Times
were tough, and after a year the young Drummond decided
he needed to be back at that ranch full-time making a
living. His father, however, didnt approve of his
sons decision to lay out of college a year. His
father and his uncle both tried to convince him to
rethink his decision, but his mind was made up. As a
last-ditch effort, the elder Drummonds came up with a
plan to get the reluctant scholar down to see his banker,
Mr. Flint, who Fred A. greatly respected.

The young Drummond had recently bought some cattle and
had them out on grass. That morning at the bank, Flint
called him back to his office. Not knowing that it was a
setup, so to speak, Drummond told Flint that he had
decided to stay out of school that fall.

"Stay out? Oomph. Oh, by the way, how are
those steers doing? I told him theyre not
quite ready, and Mr. Flint said, Well, thats
how you are. Youre not quite ready.

"He said, Ill loan you the money. Now
get down there and get your education."

That afternoon Drummond was on his way back to
college. He didnt quit again until he had his
degree in animal husbandry. That was 1937.

Back then there were a lot more cow-calf operations in
the Osage than there are today, and Drummond says a few
oldtimers still run cows, but not many. The Osage, like
the Flint Hills of Kansas, has primarily been considered
steer country. Many a stocker  today some 150,000
head  have been carried on these tallgrass prairies
through the late spring and summer months before going on
to the feedlot.

"Stockers have always been considered more
profitable in this country," Drummond says. "It
takes so much more grass for a cow than it does for a
steer  about eight acres for a cow and two and a
half to three acres to a steer. You can just about run
three steers to one cow.

Then adds, "Our grass is just too good for cows.
What were doing is selling grass, so were
interested in how many pounds of gain were going to
get off that acre of grass."

In those early days, Drummond says, not many people
ran heifers as stockers. Those that werent grown
out for replacements were generally sold to packers as
weanlings or milk-fat calves.

Early on, most of the stocker steers were sold as
three year-olds and then two year-olds.

"Back then we might have pastures with 500 to
1000 head in them. We would round them up and instead of
shipping all of them all at once, we would cut out the
fat ones," Drummond explains. "Now our
yearlings are weighing pert near as much as the two
year-olds because weve bred these cattle up."

Yearlings generally come off the Osage in mid-July
through August, weighing 750 to 950 pounds.

"We used to keep them until September or
October," he adds, "but we found out that it
doesnt pay to leave them after the first of August
because they dont gain very much, and if its
dry they wont gain anything."

Drummond has always bought and raised reputation
cattle, and that quality and reputation attracted buyers
from afar. Early on, he sold primarily to the
farmer/feeder types in Illinois and Indiana and almost
always, he says, they would pay top price.

Years ago he bought a large majority of his
"put-together" cattle out of Arkansas; a lot of
them also came out of the stockyards at Fort Worth. Today
most of their yearling cattle come from Mississippi,
Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and Texas.

Drummond has carried most of his native steers and
heifers and even his country cattle on through to the
feedlot, but hes been known to sell off grass, too,
if the market is right.

In addition to the yearling operation, Drummond also
runs a commercial Angus cow herd.

"We were straight Herefords until 1957. That I
remember," Drummond remarks. "I had a real good
friend in the Angus business. Id be milking my
Herefords out and shipping my cancer eyes and he would
never have cancer eye or any big bags on his Angus cows.
Thats what made me decide to change."

His base herd consisted of 200 heifers which he found
at Sedan, Kansas. They carried the heart brand and had
originated in the San Angelo area.

"Their bags were big and milk was running out of
their teats. They were big cows. I knew those were the
ones I wanted," Drummond recalls. "I paid $200
apiece for them. That was top price. I remember that very
well."

Drummond says it took awhile before his father came
around.

"He wasnt quite ready to go black, but when
I went to crossing them back on my Herefords and my
calves were about 50 pounds bigger than his, well, Dad
says, I believe Ill buy me some black
bulls."

Hes been more than pleased with his decision to
switch. In all those years, Drummond says, he remembers
only one cancer eye and only a few bad bags, but never so
bad that they had to be milked out.

"The Angus cattle are just less trouble. Plus,
they last a couple of years longer than our Herefords
ever did," he says.

Its their native cattle rather than the country
types, Drummond says, which prove up best in the feedlot.
They gain better and are less prone to sickness, and he
attributes that in large part to their breeding and the
way they select their replacements.

"We want a big-boned, long, stretchy kind of
cow," Drummond says, "just like what we look
for in our steers. We watch her breeding and we make damn
sure she has a good udder."

Drummond goes on visual appraisal alone to choose his
replacements.

"Weve always used our eyes to sort our
heifers," Drummond says. "When we wean the
calves, we pick the biggest, fattest calves to keep. We
do that because we know that cow had to be giving lots of
milk or that calf wouldnt be big and fat. Or, if
that calf is big and long, we know that cow had to be big
and long. Thats the way we picked them back then,
and thats still the way we pick them today.
Weve never weighed a calf in our life.

"Its all right for these registered outfits
to go to all the trouble of recordkeeping and weighing,
etc.," he continues, "but hell, for a rancher,
thats a waste of time."

Drummond believes the quality of cattle has improved
tremendously, but he admits its frustrating when ranchers
arent paid for producing that quality. Its
particularly troublesome at the feedlot level, he says,
where most all cattle are bought on the averages.

"We try to raise the best Angus cattle we can. We
pay $3000 to $4000 for a good bull. Were just
hoping someday well get paid for that good Angus
bull."

The feedlot industry, Drummond says, has been one of
the biggest and best changes the cattle business has seen
in his lifetime. The added diversity and flexibility
which the feedlot provides, he says, has gotten them out
of a pinch a time or two.

"If we have a bad drouth, we have somewhere to go
with all these stocker cattle," he notes. "We
didnt used to have that option. The feedlot has
been a great thing."

Like anyone else who has been in the cattle business
for more than a couple of years, the tough times are
usually the ones that stand out most. For Drummond, the
one year he says hell never forget was 1934.

"I was in the business then, but luckily I
didnt have too many," Drummond says.
"That year Dad sold a set of steers weighing 1000
pounds for three cents a pound," he recalls.

"He shipped one load and then called his banker
and told him, youd just as well come and get
the cattle, because theres no use me trying to pay
you off.

"The banker asked him if he had grass and he said
he had plenty of grass, so he told him to just keep them
until next year. That next year, 1935, they brought $85 a
head."

The biggest change in the industry in his lifetime by
far, he says, is modern transportation, "pickups
instead of horses. We used to have one cowboy taking care
of a couple of hundred head. Now one man can take care of
two times as many or more. Roads have made this possible.
We had terrible roads back in those days."

In his tenure, Drummond has dealt with the usual ups
and downs of the market, drouth, screwworms at one time
and always the shortage of funds.

"My biggest worry back then was money,"
Drummond says. "It was tough to make any money back
then when things were cheap. We got along, but we
didnt throw any money away. My dad could make a
dollar go further than anyone I ever knew."

The screwworm eradication program, Drummond says, was
the greatest thing, "next to finding the cure for
anaplasmosis." The vaccine for control of
anaplasmosis was discovered at the Oklahoma State
University Experiment Station at Pawhuska.

Before the fly program went into effect, Drummond
roped many a cow and calf out in the pasture to dope them
with creosote dip or chloroform. Smear 62, he says, came
much later.

After World War II, the first experiment using DDT to
spray flies was done on the Drummond Ranch.

"The flies used to be so bad that our cattle
would be bunched up in a ball. The flies would be eating
them up and there wasnt a damn thing we could
do," Drummond recalls.

The DDT, he says, worked wonders.

"We saw instant benefit. It didnt last
long, maybe 30 days and wed have to spray again,
but we figured it paid."

The patriarch turned 84 a couple of weeks ago, and
though hes slowed down a bit and turned over the
day to day operations to the younger generation, he still
continues to make his rounds at the ranch most every
morning. He keeps close tabs on the market, as well, and
his grandsons, Drummond says, call him on a regular basis
to keep him up to speed on whats happening and to
get his input on certain decisions.

When asked if the Osage is the best place to have a
ranch, Fred A. speaks like that true patriarch:

"Youre damn right. This is Gods
country. The grass and the rainfall and the people,
thats what makes this country the best."